Love.
It always felt wrong that people chased something so fickle. Something that could be there one day and gone the next.
Love reminded me of Nash’s car—scattered with bruises from a past owner; well-cared for by its current tenant; and still ticking as it awaited its fate, abandoned in some North Carolina junkyard.
The shrink Mother had sent me to when I was eleven and caught Mother a little too close to Uncle Balthazar would tell me I was examining life too carefully again. Mother also paid her to keep my mouth shut by all means. I had overheard that particular conversation on my way back from the restroom.
The whole thing was pointless.
It didn’t matter if I told Dad. The maids gossiped about my parents’ fights, saying he’d leave her as soon as I graduated high school. I believed them. Dad and Mother rarely talked, and when they did, their conversations revolved around business.
During my sessions, my shrink told me Uncle Balthazar was my mind’s representation of my demons. My mother was supposedly an analogy for strength, if you could believe that. Strength.
And the proximity between Uncle Balthazar and Mother? According to North Carolina-certified psychologist Doctor Dakota Mitchum: strength slaying my demons.
Dad was a planner. He anticipated moves like a Chess grandmaster and countered them with a ruthlessness I envied. I figured if I rebelled too hard against Mother before she and Dad divorced, I’d set off a butterfly effect. So, I kept my mouth shut, attended the shrink sessions, and spent the full hour wondering how Doctor Mitchum would rank in the Hunger Games.
I had learned something from Doctor Mitchum, though. She’d told me I needed an outlet for my creative mind. One for my emotions, too. She’d suggested drawing. I had taken up putting people on blast instead.
The t-shirt printer Dad had given me on my sixth birthday had laid dormant in the back of my closet. I’d pulled it out, brushed off the thick coating of dust, and printed a Winthrop Textiles shirt that read, “Horizontal Sundays.” When Mother asked what that meant, I had insisted it was an indie band she’d never heard of.
Shirts became my way of dealing with life, and eventually, they became Reed’s way of helping me deal with life. Fitting for the Textiles Princess of North Carolina. Mother had no clue. All she knew was she hated the tees, and she forbade me from leaving the house in anything but designer threads.
But Dad? My brilliant, attentive Dad… He always noticed the T-shirts of the Day—TSOTD, as Reed called them—meant I was dealing with something.
“Ready?” Reed waved his white shirt like a flag, hiding the front of it. It was my favorite cut that Dad’s factory manufactured, something snug and soft that made me want to curl up against Reed and turn on a scary flick.
I’d already slipped out of my ruined dress and into a freshly-printed tee. My knees pressed against my chest. I sat on my bed, covering the words I had placed on the shirt ten minutes ago.
The adrenaline had fled during the drive home, and I’d spent the rest of the time since pretending I was okay when all I wanted to do was turn back time and make Able Cartwright pay.
I was not a forgiving person. I latched onto grudges and raised them like a favorite pet, never forgetting to feed them, entertain them, and keep them company. I needed revenge, or I would spend every second obsessing over every detail of Able’s touch.
Reed flicked off the t-shirt printer and unbuttoned his button-down. I pretended to look away from the sinewy muscles no boy his age should have and waited with actual closed eyes as he slipped the fabric over his head and down his torso.
“I’m ready.” I ran my fingers through my knotted hair before covering my chest with both palms and scrambling off the covers.
The desire to roll my eyes at this childish game we often played gripped me, but I didn’t because the idea that a day would come when we wouldn’t do this scared me. I wanted to be old and gray, making ridiculous shirts with Reed.
Reed stepped closer to the bed. “1… 2…”
On three, he flipped his shirt over and I dropped my hands with practiced synchrony. We fell onto the sheets, snow-angel style, laughter filling our veins and happiness staining our cheeks as we realized we had printed the same sentence on our tees.
ABLE CARTWRIGHT HAS A SMALL DICK.
It was funny, but not that funny. I knew what he was doing, though. Getting my mind off of what had happened in the only way he knew how. I appreciated it, but nothing short of Able suffering would ease my shaky fingers.
“You’re my best friend, Reed.” It escaped as a breathy sigh I should have chained inside me.
I waited for myself to regret it, but the feeling didn’t come.
Instead, the one from earlier fogged the room. I didn’t dare give it a name as it possessed me, nudging my hand closer to Reed’s. Our fingers brushed, but I pulled mine back and played it off like an accident, flicking fake lint nearby.
Subtle.
Reed flipped onto his stomach and studied my face. Those golden locks matched mine, though his were natural, and he had two blue eyes, unlike my single one. I wanted to brush my fingertips against his eyelids until he closed them and press a kiss to each one.
Holding back had never been my strong suit, but I did with Reed because I had too much to lose. Even when I craved to grip, claim, kiss, I held back.
His fingers toyed with the ends of my hair, bringing them up to my cheek and using them to tickle me. “Are you okay, Em?”
I tugged at his ear until he stopped and considered ignoring the question but didn’t. He would ask and ask until I spilled.
The Prescotts were a relentless bunch.
Betty could interrogate a terrorist armed with nothing but a gap-toothed grin and homemade apple pie.
Hank’s kind eyes doubled as weapons of mass confessions.
Reed had never heard the word “no” in his life.
And Nash… Well, Nash was Nash. All he had to do was breathe, and people tripped over their feet to please him. He possessed a presence money couldn’t buy.
“Sheep gravitate to likable people. Likability is not a quality you can learn, but one you are born with,” Mother once informed me after Basil had invited everyone in our grade to her tenth birthday party except me. She looked down her nose at me, disappointment staining her voice. “I am likable; you are not. I lead the Junior Society; you are an outcast. Perhaps you should learn to be like sheep.”
Nash’s existence poked holes in Mother’s theory. He was simultaneously unlikeable and magnetic. Fuck the sheep. When I grew up, I wanted to be like him.
“Are you okay?” Reed repeated.
No.
Yes.
I didn’t know. Physically, fine. Mentally? A little shaken and a whole lot of bloodthirsty. But Reed was a pacifist at heart, and I had no clue what he would say if he knew what I would do if I ever got my hands on Able.
The adrenaline had pacified me in front of the office, but now that I was home, my body demanded I fight or I would shake and never stop.
“Yes,” I finally spit out. When Reed continued to study me, I shoved my hair out of my face and sat up. “I promise. I’m okay. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
But a lie of omission…
It occurred to me that my lies had piled up like an intersection crash. One after the other after the other. I needed to stop, but the alternative—a.k.a. the truth—appealed to me less.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Stop asking, Reed.” I shot him an exaggerated eye roll, glanced at the clock, and slipped under the covers, hoping he would drop the subject.
After a minute of staring at me pretend-sleeping, he did. Truthfully, Able Cartwright didn’t bother me. I had fought him off. I had stopped him. I had won.
Able Cartwright was a cockroach. It might take a ridiculous amount of attempts to crush him, but make no mistake—life will crush him.
Cockroaches die eventually.
This crush, on the other hand?
I’d tried everything from dating other boys to kissing Stella Copeland in her closet during seven minutes in heaven.
And still, it had a heartbeat.
Vibrant. Loud. Pulsing with life.
And I didn’t want to kill it.
